Sunday Night Football: Eagles vs. Seahawks

A few days before I get a message from Ben asking us if we were doing anything on Sunday and I said not that I can think of.  I asked why.  He said Del couldn't go to the Seahawks game (he is a season ticket holder) and offered us the tickets.  I asked Ben if he had anything he was doing and he had to work and was very disappointed.  I told him I could ask mom if she wanted to go.  So I called her and asked.  I told her I had to know now so he didn't give them to someone else.  She immediately said yes but I told her that he wanted $100 each for them.  That was a steal of a price considering most tickets in the stadium are over $300 or more even though we were up in the 300 level with most of the visiting team.  The seats we sat in last December were free because someone else bought them but the price that day if you were to buy them were $1200 each because they were like 15 rows up from the field.  Insane!

I just couldn't believe we were going to another game.  Two of them back to back seasons?!  I wish I would have gotten to go to one of the games in 2013.

Del had emailed me the tickets so I printed them off and made sure I had them stuck to the door so I wouldn't forget them.  I told him we would pay him at the Christmas party in the upcoming weeks.

I asked mom what she would like to do beforehand because we were going to the primetime game which started at 5:30.  She said she didn't know and we would wing it once we got there.

The day before I got all of my stuff ready including my see through bag, hand warmers and my layers of clothes I probably would be wearing by the end of the night.

That morning, I left around 11 and I made sure I had everything packed up in the Escape and since I was heading into Rainier and had some time I took the recycle with me and dumped it off at the transfer station.  I told mom I was on my way and just left the dump so she knew how much time she had before I got there.  Mom was ready, threw her stuff in the back and we headed towards Yelm.  We also stopped by the bank on our way out of town just in case we needed some money.  Between the two of us we had $80.  I wasn't sure how the parking situation would go.

We got onto Reservation Road and followed it to I-5.  I wasn't sure how the traffic would be either.  Traffic was glorious.  There weren't any accidents, no traffic, no construction, no nothing.  We got to Seattle in no time.

We got off at the stadium exit and took 3rd to downtown because I told mom I had an idea.  This past summer Groundspeak started awarding certain geocachers the ability of publishing virtuals.  This virtual cache is part of a limited release of virtuals created between August 24, 2017 and August 24, 2018.  Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a virtual cache.  I, sadly, was not one of them.

She said sure so we found a side road that took us waterfront, which has changed since the last time we were down here, and found a parking spot.  I knew we would have to pay money to park.  It cost us $16 to park for 2 hours!  Insane!! Luckily we only come here maybe twice a year.

We decided to go up to Pike Place Market before we walked along the waterfront.  We headed up the stairs and walked up Post Alley and through the area with the gum wall.

Even though it was winter there were a lot of tourists enjoying the second germiest place on Earth!  We headed out to the main street in front of the market and found the exact spot for the virtual cache, Pike Place Market (GC7B9XN) and took our picture to prove we were there.

I don't care about other cachers but virtual caches are probably my favorite type of caches and there just really isn't that many in Washington I haven't gotten.  When I found out they were allowing more vituals to be published I was super stoked.

We wandered around the market for a little while.  We paid for two hours so we were going to use the entire two hours.

We decided we wanted lunch from the waterfront so we walked back down and found our favorite place, Ivar's Fish Bar.  We ordered and I waited until she came back from the bathroom and then we traded places.  When I came out our food still wasn't ready yet.  I took a few pictures. 

We took our fish and chips into the outdoor patio and ate our food.  We talked about how we thought the game was going to go.  Since we were in the gauntlet of our season and we've lost some key games I was just hoping for a well played game.  Of course I wanted the win but I just wanted them to play a complete game with the best team in the NFC East.  I also hoped that the Seahawks would make this game worthwhile for us.  Mom didn't eat all of her French fries so we fed the rest of them to the seagulls.  One snuck up on me and stole some of the French fries because I was not feeding them fast enough.  I was kinda on edge because I didn't want them to bite my fingers.

Our two hours were almost up and we walked back to the Escape.  We had to start heading to Century Link so we could find a decent parking spot.  Hopefully the spots we've been parking in for years were available.

The places over by 8th, Holgate and Massachusetts have changed so much since the last time we've been here.  They basically made it really hard for people to park here for games.  I couldn't find a spot to squeeze my vehicle into and I was very sad we actually had to spend money this time on parking...and it wasn't cheap.  We drove around the block a few times to find a spot.  We found one across the street from the Goodwill at some business called MacMillian Piper which specializes in import and export shipping.  We backed in and paid the guy $25.  I was disgusted that I finally had to pay to park...but I knew it would happen eventually.

We made sure we had everything we would need, hid some of the possible "stealables", locked the Escape and started walking the few blocks towards the stadium.  I wanted to be at the game somewhat early so we could explore some of the activities Touchdown City had within the field house.  The walk was pretty typical since we've done this walk a lot over the years and the normal "homeless" people looking for handouts were staged in the same areas as well.  You always see this old lady sitting in a wheelchair attached to a oxygen tank holding a cardboard sign asking for money.  It always made me sad seeing her sit here every time I come here wondering if she had no family to take care of her.

Earlier I had posted that mom and I were going to the game and one of my friend from WSU were also going to be at the game and told me that she had a tailgate set up off of 1st Ave near the Showbox.  I knew were that was! Mom and I wandered over there and tried to spot Jess.  I haven't seen Jess in at least 10 years.  I saw her amongst her tailgaters.  She ran over to me and gave me a great big hug.  It was nice seeing her.  We visited for about an hour and caught each other up on what we've been doing, some of the trips we've been on, people we've seen and were just glad we had some time to catch up for a bit.

I told Jess to have a great time at the game and mom and I headed towards the stadium.  There were a lot of people to wade through as we got closer to the field house.  We got through security and into the field house.  We really weren't sure what to do since we rarely come to games. 

We ended up wandering around.  We got free rally towels from AmFam and toured some Seahawks history and got an autograph from Randall Morris, who was a running back for the Seahawks from 1984-1988.  It was fun visiting with him for a few minutes.

We checked the time and it was time to head up the stairs and into the stadium.  I got my tickets out and got in line.  I handed them to the lady to scan and they wouldn't scan.  She told me they were from last week's game.  My stomach dropped.  We got out of line and I immediately tried to get a hold of Del on Facebook messenger.  I typed out "Del, you sent me the wrong tickets."

Within a few minutes he responded with, "Crap, sorry, let me resend them."  I told him it was okay and that I received them.  I told him thank you and he told me to enjoy the game and that he wished he could have been able to make it.  I had to use my phone for the tickets, which was weird, got back in line and had the lady scan them again.  We got into the stadium and it was glorious.

Now we hike.

The last time Del gave me his tickets was preseason two years ago and Ben and I went.  His seats were on the 300 level about halfway up.  I remember how tired and sweaty we were by the time we got to our seats.

Even though it was getting cold when mom and I got to the seats we were tired and sweaty.  I sat down and hoped we didn't have to get up for any reason.  The one great thing about getting there somewhat early is we didn't have a ton of people sitting in front of us being dumb.   However, as the game got closer and closer to starting more and more Eagles fans started filling in the seats all around us.  Oh how lucky we are!  I've heard how terrible their fans were and they didn't disappoint.

Some real stupid Eagles fans sat right in front of us.  There were about five of them and they absolutely horrible.  They complained, they yelled at the refs, they rubbed their good fortune into the Seahawks fans faces, they exclaimed their quarterback was awesome (even though he played his worst game this season against us tonight and got hurt for the rest of the season), they rubbed it in our faces that they had a better record than us and it was so satisfying watching their team self destruct while the Seahawks took an important game away from them.  Our great plays and teamwork sure shut them up.

At half time it was 10-3 and mom wanted something to drink and made me go get it.  She gave me $10 and I had a few dollars on me as well.  I walked the corridor to see how much and what kind of drinks there were.  I had enough for two drinks, exactly.  While I stood in line it was very entertaining.  I got to see how stupid the Eagles fans really were.  It was amazing.  They brought up the past, they talked about Carson Wentz, they talked about their schedule, they talked about how great they were, they argued with each other and other Seahawk fans.  The part that got me was that they were arguing with each other!!  Someone almost started a fight with each other!  What is happening!?  I paid for my drinks and hiked back to our seats.

I told mom what happened and she just shook her head.

The third quarter we started pulling away and the five guys in front of us actually got really quiet and one even fell asleep!  The Eagles played all or nothing in the third and fourth quarters.  Going for it on 4th down instead of kicking the field goals and Wentz fumbled it in the end zone which was the turning point of the game for us.  We took it and ran with it...literally.  The Eagles fans started leaving halfway through the fourth quarter and some of them actually came from Philadelphia for the weekend...that probably wasn't cheap to come watch your team lose to the Seahawks.  Haha!

We pulled away even further and beat the Eagles 24-10.  Wilson went 20-31 with 227 yards and 3 touchdowns.  For the most part both teams were pretty equal except the Eagles led in turnovers, first downs and total yards.

I knew it would take us a while after the game to walk down to the corridor and snake our way down to where we entered the field so we just sat there for a minute while everyone else left their seats.

When we finally got out of the stadium it didn't take us very long to walk back to the Escape.  Getting onto the freeway was another story.  I always managed to second guess myself on which lane I had to be in to go south on I-5.  This time I was in the correct lane and didn't have to cut anyone off.  The drive back to Rainier was smooth sailing.  I dropped mom off and headed home.  I knew we would get home late but it's one of those things that you embrace that night and into the following day because YOU got to go to a Seahawk game and YOU let everyone know about it.

One thing that I wish I could have done is been able to go to a game during the 2013 or 2014 seasons because you just never know when your team will be that good again.  I sure hope it lasts for a while because it makes watching football more exciting when your team is one of the contenders.  

I got home just before midnight, grabbed a shower and went to bed because 6 a.m. comes awfully early.

Next Adventure:  Christmas Tree Extravaganza